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University of Nebraska, 



ADDRESS 



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HON. C. F/MANDERSON 



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AN ADDRESS 



DELIVERED BEFORE THE 



University of Nebraska, 



Third Annual Commencement, June 23, 1874, 



Hon. Charles F. Manderson. 



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Printed for the University by order of the Regents. 




1 LINCOLN, NEB: 

JOURNAL COMPANY, STATE PRINTERS. 

1874. 



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ADDRESS. 



MR. CHANCELLOR, 

And Gentlemen of the Faculty and Board of Regents : 

Exceeding loth as I would be to forego the honor proffered me by 
the Faculty of the University of Nebraska, yet I cannot but regret that 
the invitation had not been extended to another, and that one more ca- 
pable to perform the task allotted to me was not to address you this 
evening. It has not been my good fortune, either from personal visits 
or from the reports of those interested, to know much of the plan and 
workings of this institution ; but to me sufficient warrant that it is all it 
could reasonably be expected to be, is the fairly earned and well estab- 
lished reputation of those who have had its interests in charge, and un- 
der whose efficient care the experiment, inaugurated but three years ago, 
is fast ripening into richly deserved and fully assured success. I 
extend to you my heartfelt congratulations upon the fact. The 
people of this youngest of states point to this youngest of state univer- 
sities with well grounded pride and excusable boasting. Cause for 
pride, indeed, is there in its establishment and operation : pride in the 
government that with such bountiful hand has given the noble patrimo- 
ny of fertile acres, forming the rich endowment that makes a free uni- 
versity possible ; pride in the State that, mindful of its mighty future, 
is quick to take advantage of the opportunity for great good, and gives 
the aid of its best brain power to advise and plan for the most judicious 
expenditure of the rich treasure bestowed ; pride in the corps of hard 
working, efficient teachers who, using the bountiful means, by loving 
labor bring about the glorious end ; pride in the pupils, alive to their 
opportunity, who supplement the teacher's labor by the studious appli- 
cation and aptness of the taught. 

Teacher and pupil ! Old-fashioned words almost lost and obsolete in 
the high sounding and stilted titles of to-day. How dear the relation- 
ship they express. How great a privilege have those whose moulding, 
shaping hand forms and creates the carefully educated, thoroughly dis- 
ciplined, self-reliant man, leader of his race and kind. 

A modern writer expresses the idea most aptly, if oddly : "The spirit 
suckles; the intelligence is a breast. There is an analogy between the 



^ Address by Hon. C. F. Manderson. 

nurse who gives her milk and the preceptor who gives his thought. 
Sometimes the tutor is more father than is the father, just as the nurse 
is often more mother than is the mother. It is a beautiful thing to 
model a statute and give it life ; to mould an intelligence and instil the 
truth therein, is still more beautiful." Yours, teachers of the Univer- 
sity of Nebraska, is the glorious privilege to give to the youth of the 
State — to those who are to control its future and shape its destiny — the 
last touches of adornment and finish that are to fit them to grace and 
ornament the station they are to fill. Upon the base and shaft erected 
by home instruction and the tuition of the lower schools you are to 
place the graceful capital of the higher education. Necessary for its per- 
manence is the base of the Corinthian column; adding largely to its sym- 
metrical beauty is its fluted shaft; but essential for its usefulness and 
perfection is the wreath-encircled and vine-entwined capital. A com- 
mon tool in the hand of a clumsy workman may square the plinth 
and round the fillet of the base ; one, inexpert, may furrow and grove 
the shaft ; but the exact chiseling, trained eye, and expert hand of the 
master are needed to give to the capital the delicate tracery, imitating the 
fern leaf, the acanthus, and the flower, that is to make the complete 
"thing of beauty — a joy forever." 

Fortunate this young and growing State that, keeping pace with her 
rapid physical and material developement, so wonderful to contemplate, 
masters of the teacher's art are industriously and faithfully at work ; — 
in the lower schools, scattered all over her settled expanse of territory, 
and in this, destined to be the chief of her educational institutions. 

Who can doubt the future of this University? Captious critics and 
envious enemies may find fault and severely condemn. Unmolested let 
them indulge in one of the dearest of the rights of the American citi- 
zen — to grumble. Good will follow from the criticism, and, if needed, 
reform will result from the condemnation. "The sounding whip 
and rowels dyed in blood" but force the mettlesome steed to greater 
energy and redoubled exertion. With its corps of professors in- 
creased; its library filled with the student's choicest friends; with 
physical, chemical, and physiological laboratories and museums af- 
fording practical instruction in the higher sciences; with large 
and well-arranged dormitories, giving cheap, but good and healthful 
living; with ample and tastefully arranged grounds; with its commo- 
dious and well-built edifices (in the erection of which there shall be no 
"job" or "ring," but a fair contract honestly fulfilled); its curriculum 
opening to the seeker for knowledge all channels and avenues, — I see 
the Nebraska University realizing the ideal of one who knew what the 
highest of schools should be— "A place in which thought is free from 



Address by Hon. C. F. Manderson. 5 

all fetters, and in which all sources of knowledge and all aids to learning 
should be accessible to all comers, without distinction of creed or coun- 
try, riches or poverty." Then will its well earned fame make this 
"Magic City of the Plain " the Mecca towards which will press the crowd 
of pilgrims who testify their homage to the All Knowing God by the 
culture and developement of his best gifts to man, and whose pursuit 
of the knowledge which is power knows no limit and will be confined 
to no beaten path. 

We are told that in ancient Corinth, near the celebrated brazen 
statue of Hercules, was the beautiful fountain Pirene, so called from a 
nymph fabled to have dissolved in tears at the death of her daughter, 
who had been accidentally slain by Diana. This fountain, constructed 
of white marble, was celebrated for the salubrity of its waters,- which is- 
sued from artificial caverns and were collected in an open basin. This 
was so celebrated in antiquity that Pindar characterizes Corinth as the 
"City of Pirene," and the Delphic oracle, according to Herodotus, 
speaks of the citizens as those ' ' who dwell around the beautiful fountain 
Pirene." This charming City of Lincoln, with its amazing growth, 
may become noted for much that is great; but chief of all will be the 
gladdening fact that it contains within its limits this institution of learn- 
ing. Some historian will speak of it as the "City of the University," 
and those who here find their homes will be known as "those who 
dwell around the beautiful fountain" of knowledge from which flow 
salubrious waters, refreshing and blessing all who live upon Nebraska's 
broad prairies. 

In no one thing has the civilized world made more rapid progress 
in the last few years than in its systems of education and the perfection 
of the details of the teacher's art. The common school system of the 
country receives most hearty support in all communities, and the tax 
imposed for its existence and progression is paid with greater cheerful- 
ness than any other. The architect and the decorator are permitted full 
play to their powers of beautifying and adornment in the erection and 
finish of school edifices that ornament our choicest situations, giving 
to our verdure-clad hill-tops a most fitting crown. 

The report of the National Commissioner of Education for the year 
1873, gi yes us intelligence most pleasing to contemplate, as showing 
the liberal open-handedness of the American character, and the inclina- 
tion of the citizen of the Republic to ' ' put his money where it will do 
the most good." One of the tables of the Commissioner shows the 
gifts of individuals for educational purposes during the year 1873. The 
names of the benefactors, amount of each benefaction, and the name of 
the institution receiving the same are given in detail. A summary of the 



6 Address by Hon. C. F. Manderson. 

tables shows the amount of benefactions received in each State (where 
the amount exceeds $1000.00), and the class of institutions to which 
they were given; the aggregate for the year for all purposes being 
$11,226,977; and, as an index of what the giving public deem the most 
important, so far as that fact is evidenced by the table, I give the fol- 
lowing statement of the direction of their generosity : 

They gave to 

Colleges and Universities $8,238,141 

Schools of Science 780,658 

Schools of Theology 619,801 

Medical Colleges 78,600 

Superior and Secondary Instruction of Women 827,246 

Libraries 379,011 

Museums of Natural History 131,680 

Deaf, Dumb, and Blind 19,000 

Peabody Fund 135,840 

Miscellaneous 17,000 

Of course the amount of the aggregate would be largely increased 
were it in the power of the Commissioner to obtain information of all 
the benefactions for the cause of education in the country, for many 
there be who " do good by stealth and blush to find it fame." 

Happy the thought, too, that the days of strictly sectarian schools 
are numbered — that the straight jacket of an intolerant bigotry no long- 
er binds the powers and limits the progress of the student seeking a 
many-sided knowledge. His question to-day is not "What denomina- 
tion or sect founded and has charge of the school to which you invite 
me 1 ?" but "Where is the place where I can have the freest range for in- 
quiry, obtain the guiding hand of the most competent instructors, and 
the best opportunity for mind improvement 1" 

The seal of public condemnation appears to be placed ^upon that 
principle so fraught with danger to the common school system — the 
division among religious sects of the monies collected for educational 
purposes. Let us see to it that in our own fair Nebraska this perni- 
cious doctrine takes no root, for its growth would be into a deadly upas, 
blasting our dearest interests. 

I read in the Register and Catalogue just issued by the Faculty that 
"the advantages of the University are afforded to all citizens of the com- 
monwealth, free of charge for tuition, without regard to sex or race, on 
condition only of possessing the intellectual and moral qualifications 
requisite for admission." A noble offer truly, and one that is apace 
with the age. 



Address by Hon. C. F. Manderson. 7 

The subject of sex in education, and the proper course to pursue in 
educating the women of our country, here meets its easiest and readiest 
solution. There has been much theorizing upon the question as to 
how the vacuity of many feminine lives had best be filled. Here is 
the practical experiment worth all the theories combined. An even 
chance with man — her equal and co-worker — should be afforded to wo- 
man to make her his efficient help-meet. This proffered bounty of the 
State gives it to her. The higher education here afforded will fit her 
to take her place in the professions, in which she is yet to find a sphere 
as suitable and well-fitted to the delicate refinement of the true woman 
as the home circle. But who will say that in domestic life and in the 
administration of the household a higher education will not the better 
fit her for the performance of the detail work, the efficient doing of 
which makes the home, over which she is the presiding deity, what it 
should be? Let her bring to bear upon the questions of ventilation, 
temperature, and the housewife's economics a thorough scientific knowl- 
edge; to the arrangement of light and shade, color and decoration, 
that high artistic judgment only to be obtained by careful and long con- 
tinued study, and home is made more pleasant, and man is made hap- 
pier, better, and more capable of producing great results. God speed 
the young women whose names appear upon your Catalogue! Pio- 
neers they of a great multitude of their sex who, in after time, will here 
be fitted for the work as well as the play of life. ' ' He who educates a 
woman educates a race." 

The act of the Legislature establishing the University authorizes the 
following departments: 

1. A College of Ancient and Modern Languages, Mathematics, and 
Natural Science. 

2. A College of Agriculture. 

3. A College of Law. 

4. A College of Medicine. 

5. A College of Practical Science, Mechanics, and Civil Engineer- 
ing. 

6. A College of Fine Arts. 

You have been enabled to organize two of these departments — the 
College of Literature, Science, and Art, and the College of Agriculture. 
Here is a blending of the ornamental and the useful, the elegant and 
the common, that brings to our minds the remark of our genial scholar, 
Irving: "In America, literature and the elegant arts must grow up 
side by side with the coarser plants of daily necessity." 

Let there be no discouragement in the fact that the list of students 
is as yet a small one, and that they are confined to a portion of our ter- 



8 Address by Hon. C. F. Manderson. 

ritory. As the lower and high schools of the State continue the im- 
provement that has marked them for the last two or three years, the 
need of the more advanced learning here to be acquired will be felt; 
and as the great expanse of country west of us is settled by the agricul- 
turist, the training here to be obtained will be sought by eager crowds. 
Man seeks with avidity that which pays. Ignorant farming is unpro- 
fitable farming. This fact is to this necessarily agricultural State an im- 
portant one. Scientific labor, affording profit to the individual, affords 
profit to the state. You are doing good work in graduating under the 
bachelor's hat and the master's bonnet the scientific, trained tiller of the 
soil, having theoretical and practical knowledge of mechanical physics, 
vegetable physiology, arboriculture, horticulture, meteorology, farm 
economy, the anatomy and physiology of domestic animals, and stock 
breeding. I hope the time is close at hand when, upon some of the 
broad acres of fertility adjacent to this institution, there will be estab- 
lished a college farm, where the agricultural theories here advanced 
may be put to the test of practical working. This will bring the in- 
quiring student into readiness for action, with gun loaded and primed, 
and the "forty rounds of ammunition in his cartridge box," and the 
skilled discipline in his knowledge box, that will enable him to do suc- 
cessful battle with the enemies of the farmer's peace. He would be a 
foolish commander indeed who would confine his men to the book 
study of tactics, the cleaning of accoutrements, and the burnishing of 
guns. They would never "fright the souls of fearful adversaries" 
until, by efficient drill and practical manoeuvring, they were rendered 
fit for active service as well as dress parade. 

The world offers greater premiums for learning to-day than ever in 
her history. Time was — and not far distant — when the choice of the 
scholar was limited to the three so-called learned professions, law, 
medicine, and theology. Now the student has not only the choice, if 
he seeks to labor with brain rather than hand, to be doctor, lawyer, or 
clergyman, but he may be architect, teacher, scientist, engineer, 
chemist, or journalist. All are honorable professions, affording lead- 
ership, and none of them so crowded but that there is yet room 
upon the higher seats, and none of them but give to ability and 
energy all the fame and gain desired by the most ambitious. 

I hope to see the day when the science of government and the pro- 
fession of politics will be taught in this and similar institutions through- 
out the country. I hear you exclaim, "What! would you educate 
our youth to become politicians'?" Yes! I would indeed. Not poli- 
ticians, however, in the common acceptation of the term — not office 
seekers, but statesmen. I would lift our rulers to a platform of cul- 



Address by Hon. C. F. Manderson. y 

tured ability and brain power, from which they could see something of 
more importance than the question of their next election or return to 
office, and who would suppose that statesmanship meant something 
better than "hearing of the grange movement, and returning to one's 
constituents dressed in a hickory shirt and cowhide boots." Politics is 
a filthy pool mainly because of the foul creatures who bathe in its 
waters. Cleanse them, or let an educated public sentiment forbid 
their ablutions, and the political waters will purify and be sweetened. 
The perpetuation of American institutions requires that brighter intel- 
lects and better integrity should fill the " high places of the land." To 
have our best men in position requires that our best men should be 
trained in the profession of politics, that they may enter the field 
where the nation's honors are awarded to the victor, trained to achieve 
success, and to fill with efficient, pains-taking, honest service the places 
sought for them. I do not wish to be understood as advocating a 
school where politics shall be taught as a trade, to be pursued as one's 
chief calling. Far from it; for that is one of the evils of the day that I 
seek to remedy. What I do plead for is the thorough education of the 
American scholar in political economy, constitutional, international, 
municipal, and parliamentary law, the governing science, finance, and 
the machinery of law making and diplomacy. With this training the 
scholar will enter politics as a purifying influence, and the vulgar, de- 
basing means of vulgar, debased men will be no longer a lament of the 
present, but a disgrace of the past and a warning to the future. Is no 
lesson to be learned by the American student from the admirable po- 
litical life of Charles Sumner 1 Not only his prominent leadership, 
his polished readiness in debate, his efficiency as a law-maker, but also 
his honesty of purpose, integrity in action, earnest championship of 
the right, and singular purity of life, arose from that carefully trained, 
scholastic ability that made him the greatest senator of his time. 
The touching of no political pitch defiled Massachusetts' noblest 
son. As Francis Bacon says: "The sun, though it passes through 
dirty places, yet remains as pure as before." 

Words of wisdom and of warning come to us from the pen of one of the 
ablest men who ever made politics a study, one who was driven by that 
searching study into the fore-front of the vanguard of radical extre- 
mists — the reformer, John Stuart Mill. He says: "No govern- 
ment by a democracy, either in its political acts, or in the opinions, 
qualities, and tone of mind which it fosters, ever did or could rise 
above mediocrity, except in so far as the sovereign many have let 
themselves be guided (as in their best times they always have done) 
by the counsels and influence of a more highly gifted and instructed 



io Address by Hon. C. F. Manderson. 

few." The "sovereign many" of this country are to decide in the 
immediate future many important questions affecting their greatest 
interests, the welfare and, perhaps, the fate of the republic. The 
power to solve these questions does not, like Dogberry's reading and 
writing, "come by nature." They are matters that require careful 
study, deep research, and the labor of trained brains. "The highly 
gifted and instructed few " must step to the front, armed and equipped 
for the leadership that conducts, by well-known paths, and with no 
needless waste of material, to the desired victory. 

The people needed no teachers in deciding the questions of our po- 
litical past. These, the answering of which makes up our history, 
needed no learned argumentation: Are all men created free and equal 1 ? 
Shall the people rule ? Shall there be taxation without representation ? 
Shall slavery exist in free America? May a state secede, and by 
secession defeat the experiment of self-government ? The counsel and 
influence of the instructed few was not needed by the sovereign many 
in their solution. They were questions addressed to the heart rather 
than the head. They appealed to an innate sense of right found in any 
bosom, whether learned or ignorant. The answers to all were written 
in the heart's blood of the people. 

But what of questions like these that are of the hour, or are at the 
threshold ready to knock at the nation's door : Shall we increase the 
paper currency of the country without reference to a metallic basis ? 
Shall we resume specie payment ? Shall we, by increase of revenue, 
speedily pay off the national debt 1 ? By what means can we best stop 
official corruption 1 ? Shall there be more appointable or elective officers'? 
Shall the appointing power fill offices by competitive examinations'? 
Shall we adopt minority representation and cumulative voting 1 ? What 
is the relation of labor and capital, and how shall we best prevent 
conflicts destructive to both 1 ? What shall be done toward regulating 
corporate monopolies, so that the rights of the people and the rights 
of the corporations may both be maintained ? Shall legislation aid or 
check co-operative enterprises ? Shall education be compulsory ? Shall 
there be an intelligence qualification to the right of suffrage? Is it 
best that woman should vote? Shall we stop Mongolian immigration? 
What shall be the status of the Chinaman and the Indian? Shall 
we attempt, by legislation, to control the social rights of the citizen? 
What distinction in civil and social rights shall be made in bringing all 
upon the plane of equality? The power to answer these does not 
"come by nature." Their deliberation and determination will require 
the best work of the ripest scholars of the age, whose intellects, while 



Address by Hon. C. F. Manderson. u 

fascinated by the investigation, will be taxed and sore wearied in the 
struggle. 

Therefore it is that I plead for instruction in the science of govern- 
ment and of politics. The demand of the times is for the culture and 
scholastic training, that imperatively forces him who has it to full in- 
quiry, and to hear both sides of every question presented. We want 
to supplant the heated, hasty partisan, with the cool, deliberate states- 
man. By doing so, we aid our glorious republic to help the world "to 
come up higher," and we give to the ambitious scholar the exalted 
place described by Herbert Spencer among "those who elaborate 
new truths and teach them to their fellows, and are now the real rulers, 
the unacknowledged legislators, the virtual kings." 

The cultured gentleman who, two years ago, filled this place, urged 
in most forcible and elegant language "the duty of the state to pro- 
vide the higher education." The argument of his address was as 
convincing as its diction was polished. Did I not feel that it would 
be a trespass, unwarranted by the occasion, my desire to-night would 
be to advocate at some length the duty of the state to provide the 
lower, or more general education, and to provide it by enforcing the 
attendance of the untaught upon the school. In view of the fact that 
the learned gentleman who last year addressed you, made strong oppo- 
sition to compulsory education (with me, I confess, a pet hobby), I 
cannot refrain from attempting to uphold the cause that received such 
severe treatment at his hands, even at the risk of trespassing a little 
upon your kind attention. 

The necessity of grounding republican institutions firmly upon the 
bed-rock of the education of all the people is fully recognized by him. 
He says with apparent full appreciation of a fact that needs no argu- 
ment : "Education is the support as well as the guaranty of the 
perpetuity of a free government," and again, "discerning legislators 
* * * have discovered that liberty and education go hand in hand 
— that to grant the one without providing for the other, is to endanger 
the very structure of free government itself." Yet, notwithstanding 
these well grounded assertions, the learned gentleman makes open op- 
position to compulsory education, and disputes the right of the gov- 
ernment to save itself from danger, and, perhaps, destruction. The 
idea of obligatory education strikes his conservatism unfavorably, be- 
cause he says, it is a new one. If age is essential to give it respectability 
then give it high place and careful consideration, for it is no new 
thing. It is, at least, as old as Plato, the Greek philosopher. In 
Plato's Laws, 7 th book, we find: " In these several schools let there 
be dwellings for teachers who shall be brought from foreign parts by 



12 Address by Hon. C. F. Manderson. 

pay, and let them teach the frequenters of the schools the art of war 
and the art of music, and they shall come, not only if their parents 
please, but if they do not please ; and if their education is neglected, 
there shall be compulsory education of all and sundry, as the saying 
is, so far as this is possible ; and the pupils shall be regarded as belong- 
ing to the state rather than their parents." And Plato's idea may be 
traced down through the ages. One of those extraordinary men who 
from time to time appear to change the face of the world, and inaugu- 
rate a new era in its destinies, known in his time as the Emperor of 
the West and King of France, known to us as Charlemagne or 
Charles the Great, displayed wisdom in the eighth century that 
showed him to be well worthy of his title. He issued edicts known 
as capitularies, for the regulation of the immense empire of which he 
was the all-powerful head. In the capitulary which requires the foun- 
dation of schools throughout his realm, he says: "Right action is 
better than knowledge ; but to do what is right, we must know what 
is right." He then gave details for, and, afterwards, gave practical 
operation to very effectual schemes for elementary education through 
the length and breadth of his kingdom, and made attendance upon 
his schools a matter of compulsion. But how did the new-fangled 
hobby of the. great king work, and what was the result of this tre- 
mendous innovation 1 Let the Western Germany of to-day give the 
answer. 

I remember a story of an old preacher who found himself in the 
pulpit one Sunday morning without his sermon. The congregation 
sat expectant, and the most expert sleepers delayed the customary nap, 
while the parson sought diligently through each pocket of the seedy 
black suit, in the well-worn hat of orthodox shape, on and under the 
shiny old haircloth sofa, and about the pulpit for the manuscript that, 
you may rest assured, contained no heresy or strange or startling doc- 
trine to swing the devout congregation from its well-balanced belief in 
the Articles of Faith. Vain the search! The old man opened his 
Bible, saying: "Brethren, I have mislaid my sermon, but I will read 
you a chapter in Job worth a dozen of it." And so he did; and so 
thinking, so do I — save the substitution of Professor Huxley, Lord 
Rector of the University of Aberdeen, for Job. Speaking of the act 
of Charlemagne, and its results, he says: " No doubt the idolators out 
by the Elbe, in what is now part of Prussia, objected to the Frankish 
King's measure; no doubt the priests * * * * were loudest in 
chanting the virtues of toleration; no doubt they denounced as a cruel 
persecutor the man who would not allow them, however sincere they 
might be, to go on spreading delusions which debased the intellect as 



Address by Hon. C. F. Manderson. ij 

much as they degraded the moral sense, and undermined the bonds of 
civil allegiance; no doubt, if they had lived in these times, they would 
have been able to show with ease that the king's proceedings were 
totally contrary to the best liberal principles. But it may be said in 
justification of the Teutonic ruler, first, that he was born before those 
principles, and did not suspect that the best way of getting disorder 
into order was to let it alone; and secondly, that his rough and 
questionable proceedings did more or less bring about the end he had 
in view. For, in a couple of centuries, the schools he sowed broad- 
cast produced their crop of men thirsting for knowledge and craving 
for culture. Such men, gravitating towards Paris, as a light amidst the 
darkness of evil days, from Germany, from Spain, from Britain, and 
from Scandinavia, came together by natural affinity. By degrees they 
banded themselves into a society which, as its end was the knowledge 
of all things knowable, called itself a " Studium Generale" and when 
it had grown into a recognized corporation, acquired the name of 
il U?iiversitas Studii Generalise And thus was organized (according 
to Professor Huxley) the first University — at least, the first established 
north and west of the Alps. The opportunity thus afforded for the 
highest culture was the direct effect of an enforced lower or general 
education. 

While of Continental Europe, Saxony, Switzerland, and United 
Italy have also adopted compulsory education, Prussia has given it 
the fullest trial, and has reaped from it the richest harvest. 

Let us glance at the great results of a school system, not so perfect 
as our own, save in the one feature of obligatory attendance. Dr. 
James McCosh, who has given the subject of European schools most 
careful observation, says: "The German boy enters when about six 
years of age, and as education is compulsory, all are receiving instruc- 
tion at that age; and you do not see in Prussia those idle, ragged 
Arabs, who are constantly pressing themselves upon our notice in the 
great cities of Britain and America." After the boy has had the ad- 
vantages of the lower schools, he has his choice to enter the Gymnasie 
(classical colleges), or the Real Schules (non-classical colleges). These 
conform to the colleges of our own country, being the intermediate 
grade between the lower schools and the universities ; are under the 
charge of professors (6 to 12 to each), who are erudite scholars, and their 
graduates are thoroughly educated men. Attendance upon these col- 
leges is not compelled, but so wide-spread is the desire for thorough 
culture, induced, beyond question, by enforcing the principle of 
obligatory education, that the following satisfactory figures, compiled 
from official sources, are the gratifying results. The population of 



14 Address by Hon. C. F. Manderson. 

Germany is 41,058,196, and the number of illiterates is so few that 
one may say there are no persons over ten years of age who cannot 
read or write. One person out of 377 of the whole population has a 
gymnasium, or classical college, education, and one in 468 has a real 
schule, or non-classical college, education. One male person in every 
209 is a collegiate. Says Dr. McCosh in his excellent article on upper 
schools; " This shows how ample the provision in Germany for the 
advanced education of youths. That there should be upwards of 1,000 
such schools or, as they would be called in this country, colleges, in 
the German Empire; that instruction should be given in them by 
12,000 learned teachers; that there should be nearly 200,000 youths 
attending them, shows a state of things unequalled in any other 
country." 

Among the ripe grain gathered by Prussia from this broadcast sowing 
of the seeds of knowledge, is the harvest of German unity, military 
fame, glorious victory, land and money gain achieved by the splendid 
army of scholar soldiers that, called into being by the might of Bis- 
marck (the power behind the German throne), and led by the genius 
of Moltke, marched to Paris with its bands playing none but victo- 
rious airs. Of the German army ninety-eight (98) per cent, could read 
and write; of the French army but 48 per cent. Prussia said, in the 
words of our own Bryant : 

"Fling wide the golden shower; we trust 
The strength of armies to the dust; 
This peaceful lea may haply yield 
Its harvest for the tented field." 

Mighty in battle, because her soldiers are educated men, and not 
automatic machines, war is to Germany a winning game; but peace 
has had for her its victories also. German scientists and German phil- 
osophers lead the thought of the civilized world, and give to science, 
literature, and art its tone and coloring. 

It is said that "figures don't lie." Any American who will look 
over the figures of illiteracy in the last census returns, will wish they 
did. 

Let us look at some of the cold statistics that give to argument the 
solid basis that forces conviction. In 1870 the population of the 
United States was 38,558,371, and the number of persons over ten 
years of age unable to read and write was 5,658,144, or about one- 
seventh of all. The population over ten years of age being 28,228,945, 
we have the shameful fact that one-fifth of those who should read and 
write, cannot. The number of voters is eight and a half millions. The 
number of males over twenty-one years of age who cannot write is one 



Address by Hon. C. jF, Manderson. l$ 

and one-half millions, or one-sixth of the entire voting population. 
Alarming figures, truly, when we consider that ' ' education is the guar- 
anty of the perpetuity of a free government." 

Let us look at home. We make a better showing than the average 
state, but it is still bad enough. Nebraska had, by census of 1870, 
122,993 persons; of these, over the age of ten years, 4,861 could not 
read and write. Out of a voting population of 36,000, over 1,000 are 
wholly illiterate. 

But aside from the threatened danger to free institutions, what is the 
immediate result of this ignorance 1 Two tables of the last census re- 
port tell the tale with condensed force. They show by shaded lines of 
graded intensity the illiteracy and wealth of the country. Where the 
wealth is heaviest the illiteracy is lightest ; where the people are ignor- 
ant, they are poor. In the three States of Pennsylvania, Ohio and 
Illinois, of the illiterate persons one in ten is a pauper, while of the 
rest of the population only one in three hundred is a pauper. Ignor- 
ance stalks along with one hand clutching the bony finger of poverty, 
and the other grasped by the blood-stained hand of crime. 

Look at more dreadful figures, compiled from official statistics, by 
the New York City Council of Political Reform, on January 1st, 1874. 
"In France, from 1867 to 1869, one-half of the inhabitants could 
neither read nor write, and this one-half furnished ninety-five per cent, 
of the persons arrested for crime, and eighty-seven per cent, of those 
convicted. In other words, an ignorant person, on the average, com- 
mitted seven times the number of crimes that one not ignorant did. 
In the six New England States only seven per cent, of the inhabitants 
above the age of ten years can neither read nor write ; yet eighty per 
cent, of the crime in those states is committed by this small minority ; 
in other words, a person there without education commits fifty-three 
times as many crimes as one with education. In New York and 
Pennsylvania an ignorant person commits, on the average, seven times, 
and in the whole United States, ten times the number of crimes that 
an educated one does." 

It is to the school house, and not to the church, that we must look 
for the remedy for this political evil. It is the cultured mind that is 
most easily taught to know that its own good depends upon its care 
for the good of others. 

The Kingdom of Bavaria, in 1870, pursued an investigation which 
enables us to compare the reforming power of the schools and the 
churches : 

In Upper Bavaria there were 15 churches and 5^ school houses to 
each 1000 buildings, and 667 crimes to each 10,000 inhabitants. In 



1 6 Address by Hon. C. P. Mandersott. 

Upper Franconia the ratio was 5 churches, 7 school houses, and 444 
crimes. In Lower Bavaria the ratio was 10 churches, 4^ school 
houses, and 870 crimes. In the Palatinate, 4 churches, 11 school 
houses, and only 425 crimes, or less than one-half. In the Lower 
Palatinate, n churches, 6 school houses, and 690 crimes, while in 
Lower Franconia the ratio was 5 churches, 10 school houses, and only 
384 crimes." 

Thus you see that crime decreases almost in the same ratio that 
school houses increase. 

But we are told that to force a parent to send his child to school is 
interfering with his dearest rights and (I quote from the address of 
last year) : ' ' No necessity has yet disclosed itself to warrant state au- 
thority in thrusting its rough hand among the cords which intertwine 
the domestic relations." 

It seems to me the necessity appears even from the hasty investiga- 
tion we have given to the subject this evening. As to the right of the 
state to force the parent to educate the child, I do not desire to cross 
swords in debate with the accomplished gentleman whose words I have 
given, but will content myself with a simple reference to America's 
great commentator upon the law and the rights of persons. 

Says Chancellor Kent, condensing the wisdom of Paley, Puffen- 
dorf, Grotius, and other writers on this subject: "The duties of parents 
to their children, as being their natural guardians, consist in maintain- 
ing and educating them during the season of infancy and youth. A 
parent who sends his son into the world uneducated, and without skill 
in any art or science, does a great injury to mankind as well as to his 
own family, for he defrauds the community of a useful citizen and be- 
queaths to it a nuisance." 

Mark it, the duty to educate is as strongly enjoined as the duty to 
maintain. The coercion of the law imposes the one — why should it 
not the other 1 We do not question the right of the government to 
take for its protection or the advancement of the good of the greater 
number, the property — yes, even the life of the citizen. The unhappy 
memories of the enforcement of its right to confiscate and to draft 
are yet fresh in our minds. Admit that it can require the parent 
to offer up his life upon the altar of his country's good, and upon what 
theory can it be reasoned that the natural guardian of the child can- 
not be compelled to afford to it the education gratuitously provided by 
the common schools of the land? Perhaps no people guarded the do- 
mestic rights with more jealous care than the Quakers, who, fleeing 
from governmental oppression in England, made, under the historic elm 
tree on the banks of the Delaware, the only Indian treaty that never 



Address by Hon. C. F. Manderson. iy 

was broken. Their leader, William Penn, the first law-giver of 
Pennsylvania, incorporated with the frame of government, prepared for 
that province in 1682, the important truth, "that men of wisdom and 
virtue were requisite to preserve a good constitution, and that these 
qualities did not descend with worldly inheritance, but*were to be care- 
fully propagated by a virtuous education of the youth." Under this a 
law was passed declaring that "instruction in good and commendable 
learning is to be preferred before wealth," enjoining upon the county 
courts to see to it that all the children in the province were instructed 
in reading and writing, and imposing a fine of five pounds upon every 
parent, guardian, or overseer who failed to send a child to school. 

General Geary, late Governor of Pennsylvania, appears to think 
it about time that the Pennsylvania of to-day — the keystone of the 
national arch — should return to the wise legislation of its early law- 
givers. The Governor, in an address to the legislature, makes the 
statement, that in Philadelphia — the city of brotherly love, whose 
houses cluster thick around the scions of the great elm — there is gross 
neglect of actual attendance at school, the total absentees reaching one- 
half the juvenile population. If William Penn could return to his one 
time "grant of lands" and see the neglect to educate and failure to 
compel culture, followed by the sad rule of dishonesty and incompe- 
tency that has so frequently cursed the commonwealth, methinks he 
would repeat, with energetic emphasis, that " educated men of wisdom 
are requisite to preserve a good constitution." 

Compulsory laws will work no hardship upon parents who recog- 
nize their grave responsibility. They will reach with compelling hand 
only those who are lost to their duty and all noble instincts, and who, 
from careless indifference or for purposes of gain, place their children 
in shop, field, and factory during the years that should be devoted to 
their mental culture. Says Dr. Ray Palmer, one of the best of living 
educators, "To leave these children to their fate is to permit the exist- 
ence, in the bosom of society, of a vast hotbed of all vice ; to perpetuate 
a school which will unceasingly educate and send forth in abundance 
all sorts of evil workers. It is for this class of children that the con- 
straint of compulsory education must needs be applied." 

I must not take the time to present to you the right of the individual 
child to demand of the government (whose duty it is to afford the full 
privileges of a complete civilization) that culture which is essential to 
well-being. Henry Ward Beecher expresses the idea, that a man is 
entitled to have the whole of himself, and can only enjoy that right by 
education, by saying, "The right to be an acorn means the right to be 
an oak, and there is in nature room for the seed, both in the heaven 



1 8 Address by Hon. C. jF. Manderson. 

above and in the soil beneath, to spread itself to the utmost limit that 
has been assigned to it." 

The annual tax for school purposes in the United States is ninety- 
five millions of dollars. The tax payers who furnish this vast amount 
of money have rights we must respect. They pay for universal educa- 
tion to reduce crime and pauperism, and the government that takes 
the money is bound to use the means to produce the desired result. 
If the property of the citizens is taxed to build a bridge or road for the 
public convenience, he has the right to insist on the expenditure of the 
money to build the bridge or establish the road, and that it shall be 
used for no other purpose. Is there any rule of law or morals that 
requires different treatment with the money you exact for educational 
purposes? 

But pardon me for the length of time I have devoted to this topic. 
My only excuse is the earnest desire to see Nebraska swing into line 
with her sister states — Connecticut, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, 
Michigan, and New York — all of which have adopted compulsory 
education. 

To the students of this University who are preparing for the active 
work of life, I give God speed ! With the preparation for the world's 
conflicts afforded to you by this institution, yours is the fault if you do 
not become mighty instruments for good to your fellows. When you 
have graduated with the honors so highly prized, remember that your 
education has but just begun. Thank God for the fact! — we learn for- 
ever. This University merely places in your hands the working tools. 
Their perfect use and dexterous handling comes only with the experi- 
ence of years, and is the reward of faithful endeavor. 

" Wouldst shape a noble life ? Then cast 
No backward glances toward the past: 
And though somewhat be lost and gone, 
Yet do thou act as one new born: 
What each day needs, that shalt thou ask, 
Each day will set its proper task: 
Give others' work just share of praise, 
Not of thy own the merits raise. 
Beware no fellow man thou hate. 
And so in God's hands leave thy fate." 



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